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   The portraits of the two men on the posters on coconut trees, doorways and walls throughout the islands tells the visitor much about the historical and ethnic complexity of the people who live in Zanzibar.

    On the one hand there is Amani Abeid Karume, a cabinet minister in the incumbent government. He is conspicuously African and his late father, Sheikh Abeid Amani Karume, led the January 1964 revolution freeing the country's African majority from years of Omani Arab minority subjugation.

    That minority was the second largest in Africa after South Africa's whites and like those whites, the Arab rulers of Zanzibar practiced a form of apartheid long before the word was internationally fashionable.

    History, however, has not been taught in Zanzibar schools since the revolution. As a result, the "born frees" who will be voting in the 2000 elections know little of the history of the original African occupants, the Shirazis, Portuguese, Omani rulers, British colonialists and post-revolution years.

    The other face on the posters is conspicuously paler, that of Seif Shariff Hamad, the secretary-general of the Civic United Front (CUF). He is obviously of Arab extraction and has been accused of wanting to return the islands' Africans to slavery.

    Both men are running for Zanzibar's presidency to replace the incumbent, Salmin Amour, who has served his two constitutional terms. Amani is the candidate of the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party; Seif of CUF.

    Were elections decided on the number of posters on display, then Amani would clearly have the edge. Were they to be decided by the ethnic divide of an African versus an Arab in this African country, then once again Amani would be the front-runner.

    But Zanzibar politics are much more complex than that and it is dangerous to predict the winner. Members of both political parties (and some outsiders) have their partisan views. But the less committed members of the islands' 446,759 registered voters insist the outcome is too close to call.

    Historical, geographical, ethnic and economic considerations separate the islanders with the obvious poverty gap being largely between the Arab and Asian "haves" and the African "have-nots".

    Once the main southern Zanzibar island of Unguja was part of the African mainland. Today it is separated by 37 km of shallow sea. The original inhabitants of Zanzibar were African fishermen and farmers. Next on the scene were the Shirazis fleeing a domestic upheaval in Persia. They integrated with the African inhabitants in a way in which no subsequent group of foreigners has done. Portugal, at the height of its sea-faring power, occupied Zanzibar for 200 years until the European power lying on the fringe of "western civilisation" was in turn ousted by Omani Arabs.

    Today only fragments of that Portuguese occupation remain. There are cassava plants introduced from Brazil to feed African slaves, a pair of captured bronze cannons outside the House of Wonders, a 16th century fortified dwelling at Mvuleni-Fukuchani and a few words of Portuguese, largely nautical, in the Swahili language.

    The Omani Arabs -- first the Yaa'rubi family and, after their defeat, the Al Busaidi sultans -- were to leave an indelible scar, both visible and invisible, on the islands. In 1828, the Omani sultan, Seyyid Said, paid his first visit to Zanzibar. Four years later he made it his capital. Upon his death in 1856 the Sultanates of Oman and Zanzibar were divided by the British with the latter coming under the rule of Seyyid Barghash.

    Zanzibar became a British protectorate in 1890 and while the Sultan was initially treated as an equal, he never was in reality and in 1913 this pretense was abandoned with Zanzibar placed under the colonial office.

    A Zanzibar Protectorate Council (ZPC) was created representing British, Arab and Asian interests. But Africans were excluded and were not represented in the subsequently created Legislative Council until 1946.

    In 1955, the Zanzibar Nationalist Party (ZNP) was formed. It emerged from the Nationalist Party of the Subjects of the Sultan and it spread rumours that only its members were eligible to vote. In reaction, the African Association and the Shirazi Association formed the Afro-Shirazi Union (ASU), the forerunner of the Afro-Shirazi Party (ASP).

    These two early political parties are important for, in all but name, and with some blurring at the edges, they are the forerunners of the CCM and CUF represented by Amani and Seif in the 2000 elections.

    British demarcation (less politely known as gerrymandering) of constituencies ensured political violence in the run-up to the 1963 elections. For instance, in the 1963 elections the predominantly African areas of Chaani and Raha Leo had 5,015 and 4,022 voters respectively while the predominantly Arab and Asian Stone Town was divided into two constituencies for the 2,122 voters.

    In those elections in July 1963, the ASP won 87,085 or 54.21 percent of the 160,644 valid votes caste. The remainder went to the ZNP and its coalition partner, the Zanzibar and Pemba People's Party (ZPPP). Nevertheless, as a result of the British carefully arranging the constituencies, the ASP won only 13 seats against 18 by the coalition.

    As they had always intended, the British handed over Zanzibar at independence on 9 December 1963 to the Arab minority. Thirty-two days later the revolution occurred with the African majority seizing power. Zanzibar joined Tanganyika to form the United Republic of Tanzania in 1964, but retains its own governance structure and electoral system.

    Today Zanzibar has 50 constituencies (29 on the main island of Unguja and 21 on Pemba) and even the most optimistic party stalwarts admit that neither party can obtain the two-thirds majority in the forthcoming elections allowing it to make constitutional changes.

    President Amour who, according to the Zanzibar Electoral Commission (ZEC) won 50.2 percent of the vote in the 1995 elections, was charged by CUF and western nations with rigging the ballot. As a result aid to the islands, including basic medicines, was withheld. Some western donors, however, are resuming aid to Zanzibar.